Motorola Cliq photos

Motorola introduces its first Android phone, the Cliq for T-Mobile. Check out our hands-on photos.

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Motorola Cliq

The Motorola Cliq is the company's first Google Android device. The Cliq will be available from T-Mobile later this fall, just in time for the holiday season. It will be the third Android phone for the carrier (joining the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G and the T-Mobile G1) and the Cliq will be exclusive to T-Mobile, though neither companies said for how long. The Cliq will be offered to other countries worldwide in 2010 under the name Dext. Pricing was also not announced at this time.

The Motorola Cliq is aimed at "connected socializers." The ones who use social networking sites heavily and also want a device that can combine work and personal lives. While this group tends to fall into the 20- to 30-year-old range, Motorola said that some of the biggest adopters of social networking are those above 30, so the Cliq isn't limited to just that age range.

Physical design

Measurements and buildThe Cliq features a slider design and measures 4.49 inches tall by 2.28
inches wide by 0.62 inch thick and weighs 5.6 ounces. The size is
neither too small or too big, but more than anything, we were impressed
with the build quality of the phone. It has a really solid construction
and just feels like a well-made handset.

Touch screen
On front, there's a 3.1-inch HVGA capacitive touch screen with a
320x480 pixel resolution. It's not the sharpest we've seen, but still,
the display is very clear and vibrant. In our very brief time with the
device, the touch screen seemed responsive. You also get several
navigation buttons below the display.

Keyboard
When you slide open the phone, you'll be greeted by the Motorola Cliq's
full QWERTY keyboard, which we have to say is excellent. The buttons are a good size and have a nice bubbly shape to them. They don't feel cheap and they provide a nice springy feedback, making for a great typing experience. It ranks pretty high in our list of QWERTY devices as far as the keyboard.

Motorolablur

More than the phone itself, Motorola is really pushing its Motorolablur experience. Motorolablur is an app and service that syncs information from all the various connections you have in your life, such as Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, and your personal and work e-mail accounts, and automatically
streams updates to your home screen.

While it's nice to have all this information delivered to you right on
your home screen and eliminates the need to open and close various
apps, we're not completely sold on it. First, there's a bit of
information overload and it also just overwhelms the home screen. To be fair, we didn't get too much time to really explore and play with the device, so we reserve the right to change our mind when we get the phone in for review.

One other aspect of Motorolablur is that it backs up all your data to a Motorola-run server, so even if your phone gets lost or stolen and you have to remote wipe your date (a feature also supported by Motorolablur), all your information will be backed up to the server.

Example of MotorolaBlur

Here you can see an example of a Contact page where all the information for one person--phone number, contact image, Twitter name, Facebook--is brought together in one view. It's a great feature, though not totally original. It reminded us a lot of the Palm WebOS Synergy feature, which also merges all contact information from different sources and erases duplicates.

Lights, camera, action

On back, you'll find the Cliq's 5-megapixel camera. It can also record video at 24fps and with the phone's built-in GPS, you can geotag photos as well. Being a phone for social networking and all, you'll be able to upload pictures and video to various sites right from the device.

3.5 millimeter heaphone jack

The Motorola Cliq comes equipped with a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, which we're always happy to see. As far as music and video, the handset offers a built-in music and video player and also comes preloaded with the Amazon MP3 Store, a dedicated YouTube app, Shazam, Last.fm, and Imeem. T-Mobile will also ship the Cliq with a 2GB microSD card, though it can support up to 32GB.

Side profile

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha gave the keynote at Mobilize 09 to explain the company's Android strategy and was later joined by Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief technology and information officer, to officially introduce the Motorola Cliq.